Saturday, 16 October 2010

Its been a busy week, unfortunately its been so busy its not left much time for training, this week has been a week of travelling and meeting people. We've been working hard over the last few months to make as many people as possible aware of the recycling project, enabling them to pass on the cycles that they no longer want- you can find out more about Coventry Recycled Cycles and the project here

I'm not sure exactly why, but this week has been one which has been filled with both donations and requests for bikes- happily we've been able to match most of these to each other but this has required lots of too-ing and fro-ing across the city (thankyou Lisa and Bob). Despite the time it absorbs its lovely to see the immediate difference it makes to those that recieve a free bicycle and its fantastic to know that the bike that has been gifted has been saved from being 'recycled'( squashed and melted) and instead has been re-used.

We were lucky enough to meet with one of our local councillors Nigel Lee this week, who himself a keen cyclist donated his unwanted bikes to the scheme having just benefited from the 'tax free bikes' scheme- we'll hopefully be rehoming them later this week.

(Me and Councillor Nigel Lee)

Running the scheme has taken me all over the Midlands, to places and people that i'd not have seen otherwise. This week we popped over to Tamworth to meet Rob and his wife who donated not only a bicycle, but also tools and a pump. We also had a mini-adventure which took us on the train to meet Alan in Droitwich, a place which (I have to be honest) never drew me to visit but turned out to be lovely.

Going to Droitwich offered the opportunity to try out the basics of travelling on a train with a bike- something which had previously filled me with fear but which turned out to be surprisingly easy. I met a fantastic guy on the train back (who had many more cycling years under his bike than me) who talked all about the bicycles he had had built specially for him- although now retired he still had two identical bikes one which he had used for work- and one which he kept for 'best' . I was really touched by the way he talked about his bike which still hangs in his garage and that he would periodically go to gaze at- he described this as ' his own piece of art'....i might try hanging one of my bicycles in the house just to see what lisa thinks!

I'm hoping this next week will bring a little more cycling...lets see what happens!